


the spider taketh hold with her hands

by pieandsouffle



Series: the watcher's crown is worn by a queen [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Arachnophobia, Archivist Sasha James, Colony AU, Don't have to read part 1, Entomophobia, Gen, Horror, Rating May Change, Sasha POV, Sort Of, Spoilers for Episode 161, Trypophobia, Vermiphobia, and her disgustingness, archivist sasha, description of Jane Prentiss, detailed statement about jane prentiss, episode 22 au, lowkey jonmartin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:48:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23527159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pieandsouffle/pseuds/pieandsouffle
Summary: In an effort to accelerate digitization of the Archives, Sasha assigns one statement to each of her assistants. Tim gets a gross one about meat. Martin's is about a Leitner.Jon receives one about a spider.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims, Sasha James & Jonathan Sims
Series: the watcher's crown is worn by a queen [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1690378
Comments: 108
Kudos: 413





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ooooh first real addition to the AU!!!!
> 
> Also to note: while there isn't anything triggering in this chapter, there _will_ be a future chapter that is a detailed statement which _will_ contain description of spiders, worms, holes, body horror, and general awfulness Jane Prentiss. I will put a warning before the relevant chapter.

The pile of statements to be digitized has been reduced by fifteen.

Above ground, in the land of daylight, researching to full capacity and recording fifteen statements in as many weeks would be an achievement. Four months ago, Sasha would have happily treated herself to a night out, or to a very expensive meal at a very fancy restaurant, or a nice, crisp new book, or a few dozen cheap old paperbacks of bad romance novels that she’d die rather than tell anyone she actually enjoyed reading.

But the problem now, with working in the Archives, with _being_ the Archivist, is that even though Gertrude was the one who created the colossal, abominable, catastrophic mess that is the Archives, that colossal, abominable, catastrophic mess is now _Sasha’s problem._ Fifteen statements in as many weeks means only that it’s now apparent it will take three thousand weeks to arrange this place properly, and, if Sasha’s maths is correct, that means she’ll be living as a library troglodyte for fifty-seven years and six months. Not including holidays. Or long service leave.

And the pile of statements.

Has reduced.

By only.

Fifteen.

She thinks her brain might possibly, actually, definitely melt before those fifty-seven years are up.

There has _got_ to be a way to reduce this. Thirty years. Twenty-five. Twenty. God, _please_ let there be a way … Let her think of one … she’s a good person. She doesn’t deserve this. She deserves a way to reduce this.

And it is staring into the cup of tea Martin brings her at 9am (the strongest tea they have, with a squirt of honey and milk) that a way to reduce this comes to her.

It’s not very responsible. She’ll agree to that. It is _not_ what a good archivist would do, but forgive her for that, as the only archivist she’s ever met was Gertrude Robinson, who could hardly be called the glowing model of what an archivist should be and do. Again: this mess is Gertrude’s. Was Gertrude’s. And Sasha thinks that this might be the way to accelerate the cleaning process. And slash those fifty-seven years of troglodytic existence into only nineteen.

“I’m changing the way we research statements,” she tells Martin thirty minutes after she’s ironed out her still-creased plan when he comes in to collect her mug.

“Oh, you are?” Martin says anxiously.

“That’s right! It looks to me like Gertrude has not done her job for some decades, so I’m putting us on a – er, well an accelerated schedule.”

She takes one look at his face and almost bursts out laughing. The apprehension that appears on his face is as fast as a slap.

“You are?”

“Don’t worry about it, really.”

“Uh – sure?” he fumbles for her mug. It’s a tacky one shaped like an alpaca he gave her when she first transferred into Research. Tim has an octopus. Jon has a cat he is absurdly protective over when Martin isn’t in the room.

“Martin, I promise it’s not going to be all that bad.”

Martin seems to hear this as _this is going to be very bad._

“There’ll be a little extra work for everyone to do, but it’s also going to be a bit easier. Each week I’m going to give each of you a different statement to research. I don’t expect you to do it as thoroughly as you might with all three of you working on it, but we have some _serious_ build-up of statements, and I need the _bare minimum_ of follow-up done for each one so we can file some of these and be done with them.”

She doesn’t think it’s all that bad a plan.

Martin looks somewhat relieved. “Oh, that sounds okay actually. I was thinking – well, actually I don’t know what I was thinking, but uh … ”

“I can read your face. You were thinking, _this is going to be very bad._ ”

Martin winces. She’s hit the nail on the head.

“Well, well maybe, but bad for _me_ , not in general, not that it was going to be a bad idea. In fact I think it’s a good idea!”

“I’m glad you think so! Because I actually have your first individual statement!”

She’s already picked one for each of them. They were the three on the top of the stack on her desk. No point in sifting through to try and find good ones. Just start at the top of the pile and work down. She presents him his with a silly little flourish that Martin replicates as he accepts it.

His is an interesting statement. She thought so, and she can tell he thinks so too by the way his eyes widen when he opens the file. “Oh, a Leitner!”

“Sure is!”

Martin’s eyes rapidly start reading the statement, but he catches himself after a few seconds and closes the file. “Is it one we’ve got?” he asks. “In Artefact Storage, that is.”

She shrugs. It might be. Might not be. She was only in Artefact Storage for three months before she applied for a transfer due to extenuating circumstances.

The circumstances were that it sucked.

“Could be. I don’t remember seeing it while I was there, but it might have acquired after.”

“Oh. Well, it should be interesting anyway!”

“They always are, aren’t they?”

She was very careful in picking who would do which statement when she read the three at the top of the pile. The revolting meat one immediately called to her as Tim’s, as she was sure neither Martin nor Jon had the stomach to deal with a case with actual meat being nailed every inch of an apartment. Jon seems to have a very personal hatred – possibly a fear? – of Leitners, so she couldn’t give him that one. The Leitner went to Martin. And that left –

Well.

When she read the statement and it was about a _ghost spider_ , she knew Jon would be more contemptuous than ever thought possible.

She also knew the entertainment she would get out of watching Jon research a spooky (a word he hates) ghost (a concept of which he is utterly scornful) spider would make those nineteen years absolutely worth it.

* * *

“Jon,” she says when he enters her office twenty minutes or so after Martin has left. He sits rigidly in the wooden chair on the opposite side of her desk. “Has Martin explained to you and Tim what I’ll be changing?”

He sniffs. “No.”

So she tells him. His face doesn’t change for the duration of the explanation. He barely so much as twitches.

When she’s finished, he says, “Sounds more efficient.”

Is that approval in his voice?

“Happy to hear that. I’ve already given Martin his first statement, a Leitner – ”

Jon’s customary frown deepens.

“ – and I’ve got yours right here.” She doesn’t bother with a flourish for this statement, but does draw it back slightly so Jon misses it the first time he reaches for it. He glowers at her. She smiles back, and hands it to him. “I’m giving you Carlos Vittery’s statement for follow-up. I don’t expect there’ll be that much to do; I don’t know what else we can find of a ‘ghost spider’, but if you could just have a poke around his flat if you can, speak to his neighbours – ”

“A _what_.”

“Ghost spider,” she repeats. “There shouldn’t be any problem with … ” she trails off as Jon’s dark skin seems to drain of all blood, leaving it an unpleasant greyish tone. “I – Jon?”

There’s a look in his eyes that disturbs Sasha almost as much as any flats with meat nailed to the walls. Jon’s eyes are dark and perpetually disdainful; hard to look into without feeling annoyed, or as if you’ve done something wrong and are being scolded. There’s nothing particularly special about them. He just has – well. A very normal, if aloof, gaze.

The shine of outright panic in them is something new, and extremely unnerving. He’s staring at the front page of the statement, eyes darting across each line, but unlike Martin it takes him more than a few seconds to pull away.

“Is everything … alright?” she asks.

Jon’s jaw opens and closes silently a few times like a freshly-oiled hinge. The silence presses in, and Sasha finds a quiet discomfort creeping up her spine. It’s not fear, of course. And _definitely_ not fear of Jon, of course. She has an inch on him, and a great deal more muscle mass. Jon is frightening only to people shorter than five foot six and, when he isn’t too busy tripping over his latent gay pining, Martin.

But something is frightening Jon. _Jon!_ Jon of the haughty _these statement givers out to be medicated if they’re experiencing such wild, improbably_ delusions … Jon of all people is scared of a _ghost spider?_ How is this even –

Oh.

_Oh._

Jon is not scared of a ghost.

Jon is scared of a _spider_.

Jon, twenty-eight, scared of a spider, swallows and says, in a half-successful attempt at his regular toplofty cadence, “just fine, thank you, Sasha.”

She leans forward in her wheelie chair, ignoring the squeak of the backrest. She feels a little guilty. She didn’t _know_ he was an arachnophobe. She wouldn’t have assigned him the case if she had!

God, maybe he _should_ do the meat one.

Or maybe not.

Are _all_ the statements terrifying to him somehow?

(Silly question: they work at the Magnus Institute.)

“Are you sure, Jon?” she asks. “You look a bit sick.”

“I’m just fine,” he repeats tightly.

“I didn’t know you have arachnophobia, it’s okay if – ”

“I’m fine.”

“ – you don’t want to do this statement – ”

“I’m fine.”

“ – I can easily give you a different one – ”

“Sasha, really, I’m – ”

“ – I can give the case to Tim or Martin – ”

And just like that, Jon is back.

“Absolutely _not_ ,” he snaps. “I am _fine,_ Sasha.” And he rises to his feet haughtily and strides from the room, tripping only slightly. The door shuts with an angry click.

Sasha stares after him.

She stares harder when he comes back in almost immediately and takes the Vittery file he left on the desk. Then he hastens from the office again, and Sasha is left alone.

Well.

The stack of statements has now been reduced by eighteen.


	2. Chapter 2

Sasha comes in early on Wednesday.

She gets up at five-thirty, catches the Tube at five past six after a second-rate coffee drunk standing bleary-eyed in the kitchen, and trudges up to the doors of the Institute at ten to seven. The wind is biting, but it always is in February. She tries to ignore its teeth ripping through her scarf as she searches her pockets for the key to the padlocked chain looping through the handles.

The Institute is cold, but not as cold as outside. It’s also silent, except for the low moaning of the wind outside.

Sasha loves it when the weather’s like a poorly written horror story.

Her first task is to turn on the heating, and she sighs in relief as warmth radiates from the vents and starts to soothe her chilled bones. She stands there for a few moments, just basking, before summoning up her courage and making her way down into the Archives.

The Archives run on a separate heating system or something like that, no one had explained when she became archivist, so it had taken the first four hours of her first day to find out how to put on the heating. Now she at least knows where it is, but it does mean she has to go to the part of the Archives as far away from her office as physically possible to turn it on. And the Archives are _freezing._ She trembles her way out of her office after depositing her bag, shudders past the closed door of document storage and down the long, dark corridor with no doorways to the very end, where there’re the _on/off_ switches for the heating.

Sasha has a bone to pick with the architect.

She turns it on; waits for the rumble that suggests it’s working and starts her way back when she’s reassured that today will not be the day that the Archival staff freeze to death. Who on earth would install such a counterintuitive heating system for an _underground_ part of the Institute she’ll never know.

Warm air is breathing through the corridors, and she’s just rubbing her hands together and about to get back into her office when she realises that the door to Document Storage –

Which she was _certain_ was closed before –

– Is now open.

Just a crack, mind you. Barely ajar.

But definitely open.

And she’s positive that it wasn’t before.

Sasha stands deadly still, hand on the doorknob to her office, hardly daring to breathe. She’s not a short woman, but 170cm is still shorter than a short man, unless that short man is Jon. She can do Judo. She has a Swiss Army Knife hidden in an inner compartment in her handbag, but has never had to use it before: hurling someone over her shoulder has always been an effective defence and she has yet to resort to an actual weapon.

She stays there, ears straining to catch any noise that might suggest an intruder.

The heating rumbles.

Document Storage is silent.

She’s almost decided that it was just the change in air pressure that opened the door to Document Storage, when there’s a rustle from within that is definitely the sound of a person. Too deliberate, too distinct. Sasha tiptoes over – she can now hear the footsteps of someone trying incredibly hard to be silent – and kicks open the door and seizes the arm of the figure within.

No sense in delays.

She twists the arm behind the figure with a savage cry, jams her knee into their lower back and they fold like a piece of paper. Now she’s kneeling on the intruder’s back, their arm wrenched into what she knows is an incredibly painful position. The intruder squirms, trying to relieve the pressure on their arm. Sasha mercilessly twists it harder.

“ _OH GOD SASHA IT’S ME IT’S JON PLEASE LET GO AAAAGHHH –_ ”

“Jon?” She releases his arm. It slithers back into a normal position almost comically slowly, and Jon sighs in relief and presses his face into the floor.

“Good morning,” he mumbles.

“Jesus, Jon, it’s _seven in the morning._ What are you doing here? How did you get in?”

“Please get off me.”

“Oh! Sorry.”

It takes Jon a few seconds to pick himself up off the floor after she’s gotten off his back. He moves like everything hurts, and she feels bad about it until she remembers that he’s at the Institute at seven in the morning, and of the two of them _she is the only one with the key._ “Right. Good morning. What are you doing here?”

Jon rotates his shoulder. “Er. For work.”

“You’re not due in until nine.”

“I came in early,” says Jon. The look on his face shows clearly that he’s lying, knows that she knows he’s lying, and that he knows that she knows that he knows that she knows he’s lying.

He’s wearing the same clothes as yesterday.

For _fuck’s sake,_ Jon …

“Jon. Did you go home at all last night.”

It’s a statement, not a question. She already knows the answer. She doesn’t need the flash of guilt on his face to tell her she’s right.

She throws her hands up in the air.“Well. That’s just _fantastic,_ Jon. Any reason why?” And then, much more guiltily, “oh God. You haven’t lost your flat, have you? If that’s the case – ”

“No, I haven’t _lost_ my flat,” Jon scoffs.

She quirks an eyebrow. “Are you sure that you’re just not telling me because you’re too embarrassed about it and are trying to struggle on in silence? Because that’s not okay; you can stay with me or Tim or – ”

“I’m. Not. Homeless. I-I just got carried away in my research, and by the time I thought I might go home it was so late I thought it best to just stay here.” His cheeks are darker. She thinks it’s in embarrassment.

She opens her mouth to tell him that while she’s not happy, she does believe him, but shuts her mouth with a snap.

Jon tenses.

“You have _one_ statement to research this week,” she says. “And forgive me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure I told you I _don’t_ expect a thorough job. We’re on a tight time schedule.”

“A job worth doing is worth doing well,” Jon quotes sniffily.

Bastard just can’t help himself, can he? If she wasn’t his superior, she’d’ve whacked him on the arm. As it happens, the glare she gives him makes Jon shrivel back a bit anyway.

“Look,” he backtracks, sounding almost apologetic. “I thought I might as well do enough to determine if it was a hoax or not – ”

“Jon. That’s for _me_ to decide. And before I gave _any_ of you the statements I made sure that they were real.”

In the loosest sense. Her method is to read out the first line while her laptop records, and if the file is corrupted she gives it to one of the assistants. Otherwise it goes into a different pile, which she records on her laptop and then never designates it for follow-up. The file is deposited in Document Storage to be forgotten to time.

The tape-recorder knows best, somehow.

Jon scoffs. Sasha doesn’t see red, but she does feel the urge to slap him again. “This is all _nonsense,_ none of them are real – ”

She holds up a hand mid-sentence. “Don’t argue while I’m disciplining you.”

God, saying that makes her feel like a bitch. Jon startles, and his mouth shuts with a _click_.

“If you really don’t believe that any of the statements are real, why are you putting so much effort into this one?”

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t look at her either.

It’s like talking to a petulant child.

“Okay. Jon, I don’t want to see you in the Institute until after midday. Go home, get some sleep.” She turns, gesturing to the door.

Jon doesn’t move.

“ _Go_.”

He scurries out of Document Storage. When she gets back into the corridor, he’s not there either. He’s not in her office, an ill-advised hiding place if ever there was one, so she assumes – well. No. She _hopes_ he’s gone home. She isn’t one hundred percent sure that’s what he’ll do. But she’s done what she can. Jon is a grown man, and if he wants to disobey her instructions then that’s on him. It’s no longer in her hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cut that shit out, Jon. Fucking nerd.
> 
> Will fix this up later, make it longer etc. Just had to post something or I'd never get round to it. Also I really want to just get to The Statement.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon doesn't turn up on Thursday.
> 
> Nor on Friday.
> 
> Nor on - well, he does, eventually.

Thursday gifts Sasha with a day that isn’t much better than the one that came before.

She arrives at seven as she did the day before, which is the worst beginning to a working day as she can imagine, but at the very least, today gives no sign of a vagrant named Jonathan Sims lurking in Document Storage.

She checks. The rickety cot she only spotted in there yesterday afternoon (and filled her with rage) is unslept in, and still folded up and wedged onto a high shelf she didn’t think Jon would be able to reach. Satisfied, she retreats back to her office, grabs a stack of unconvincing hoax statements, and prepares herself for a morning of uneventful recording.

The buzzing of her phone drives her to resurface a few hours later.

She looks up from the statement, an especially weak and wandering one about demon scorpions, to read a text from Jon. The fact she receives a text and not a call is already exceptional in itself, but the subject of the message is even more unlikely.

 _Sick today,_ Jon claims brusquely. _I think I have stomach bugs._

Sasha frowns, and puts aside the statement, barely remembering to press the spacebar on her keyboard and stop recording.

Jon doesn’t _get_ sick.

Although he does. A more honest declaration would be that Jon doesn’t _believe_ he can get sick. Sasha’s seen him come in with his face drained of blood to an unpleasant, greyish shade. He’s worn a scarf across the lower half of his face in a makeshift surgical mask in the past, which never disguised the sound of constant sniffing and subsequently drove the research staff crazy.

“You need to go home,” Sasha told him once. Jon gave her a withering look, sitting slowly back in his seat after returning from the bathroom, where she was convinced he’d gone to throw up. “That’s the fifth time you’ve gone to the bathroom in the last two hours. You’re sick!”

“I’m not sick,” he said, in the most blatant and unconvincing lie she’d ever heard.

“Of course you’re not!” Tim agreed brightly, cracking open the carboard and plastic encasing a supermarket sandwich. “People go to the bathroom sometimes, Sasha. No need to be a creep about it. Who’s counting?” He freed the sandwich, and the smell of egg and tuna wafted across the room.

Jon glared at Tim, and knocked over a pencil cup in his haste to get to the bathroom.

He doesn’t respond to Sasha’s message telling him to look after himself and get some rest, but that’s expected. The conversation (however short) reached a natural conclusion, and Jon isn’t one to continue a conversation if he needn’t.

More likely he’s offended by her lack of capitalisation or confused by the square box at the end of the text. He categorically refuses the enable emojis on his phone. She puts her own away again and returns to the scorpions and the toxic waste.

Martin comes in at 9:13, rambling and apologetic and extremely damp.

“I’m so sorry Sasha,” he frets. “I missed the train again and had to take the bus instead, but it drops me off a bit further down the street than the Tube station and I had to walk – ”

Martin’s lateness is consistent, was consistent, and will always be so. She would be more concerned if he was on time or, god forbid, early. Bored delving into employee records revealed to her long ago that Martin isn’t able to get a closer flat without incurring the wrath of expensive city apartments, with or without his falsified resumé.

She’s also not a snitch, so she waves away his apologies.

“As always, make me some tea and I’ll say nothing of it,” she says instead. “And get some for yourself while you’re at it; you’re completely saturated.”

Martin apologises profusely on the way out anyway, and as she dives into yet another garbage statement she mentally prepares herself for another nine apologies when he comes back in with her tea.

He doesn’t make it back in until quarter past ten, as her already unpleasant morning is made a bit worse by a woman come trembling in with an outrageously false statement. The tape recorder remains in her desk drawer, and Sasha and her laptop are treated to a wild story that, eerily enough, followed along pretty well with the plot of a Diana Wynne Jones novel.

“Thank you,” Sasha says in her chirpiest _you’re wasting my time_ voice after the woman has finished describing a man being turned into a concrete tree. “We’ll be sure to follow-up. I think _The Pinhoe Egg_ is a great place to start.”

The woman leaves at 10:05, and Sasha deletes the statement from her laptop immediately.

“It’s ten on a _Thursday_ ,” she complains to Martin when he pokes his head back in. “Do people have nothing better to do that make shit up?”

Martin gives a customary mild shrug, and deposits her alpaca mug, steaming with milky earl grey, next to her elbow.

“Thank god, I was dying, Martin. _Dying_.”

God, does Martin put crack in his tea or something? Her first eager slurp revives every neuron and nerve in her body, and she lets out a long, exaggerated sigh.

“I’m happy to help!” Martin says, unexpectedly forgoing another unnecessary apology. “And speaking of dying … I haven’t seen Jon, nor’ve I heard from him today and I – ”

Sasha waves a hand. “He’s fine. Got a text saying he was sick, just this morning.”

“So … not fine, then?”

“Well I s’pose not, but he’s still got the bodily autonomy to send me a text message, so fine enough. Alive.”

Martin gnaws on his lower lip.

“Martin. I mean this in the nicest possible way, but your crush and your anxiety make the absolute worst team.”

“I’m not anxious!” Martin says anxiously. “And – no, I don’t have a _crush_ on – ”

“Sure, sure, I believe you.”

“Look, I _don’t,_ ” he says in a lie more blatant than that woman’s Chrestomanci story, “but it’s just – well, I don’t know if he is okay? It’s just he didn’t sound sick yesterday like, at _all_ , and it’s not as though he’d ever call in – ”

Jon, you _bastard_ –

“Waitwaitwait, Martin, _stop_. Are you telling me that you _saw Jon at work yesterday?”_

She’s going to kill him, she’s going to kill him _stone dead_ –

“No,” says Martin.

Sasha stops her murder-plotting, and leans back in surprise. “You … didn’t?”

“Er … no?” he says slowly. He’s not lying either. “He called me yesterday, five-ish? Just before Tim and I left the Institute. He said he was going to check out a location for his statement and … ” Martin hesitates.

“Martin.”

“Look, he asked me not to say – ”

“ _Martin.”_

“I don’t know if he told me in confidence so – ”

“I can pull the boss card, if it makes it easier – ”

“It _does not_ ,” he squawks.

“You’ve already told me he went to – ”

“It’s not about _that_ – ”

“Then what it’s about, Martin? Tell me. Tell me or – ” she casts her mind about for something to threaten him with. “Or I’ll get Elias.”

“You needn’t do that,” Martin says hastily.

“Then _what is it?”_

Martin’s face does a very complicated thing. “He’s – Jon’s – look, just … _don’t_ tell him I told you? Please?”

She leans forward. “I would _never_.” She doesn’t mean to tease Martin, but he does make it so awfully easy.

He sighs. “Well, Jon said that there were spiders in his statement and – ”

“Oh, his arachnophobia? I already know about that.”

“ … Oh?”

“Of course! What kind of boss would I be if I didn’t?”

The kind of boss who designated him a statement on a subject he has a phobia of.

Oops.

Martin lets out a long sigh. “Well ... yeah. He needed me to – to _talk him_ into going there because he was second-guessing himself. I think he was on the Tube. Anyway, he _really_ doesn’t like spiders, not really sure why because they’re not _really_ very scary at all? Well I don’t think so anyway, Jon clearly doesn’t agree, but I tried to tell him that they are sort of cute, especially the big, fluffy ones, and – ”

“And Jon did not like you telling him spiders are cute, let me guess.”

Martin winces. “Well, no. But I asked if he wanted me to meet him there, so he didn’t have to go in by himself and I _think_ he was going to say yes? But Tim took my phone and said something about how British spiders are actually the most dangerous in the world and the government is trying to stop mass panic about them and that kind of … bullshit. Jon yelled at him for that. Then he said something about how Jon needed help opening the door to the building because of his – uh, I think he said something like ‘pipe-cleaner arms’ and something about scotch-tape? Anyway, Jon got mad and hung up.”

Sounds about right for the lot of them.

“I see.”

“I assume he went in?” Martin continues. “I think Tim’s goading actually _worked_ at making him follow through. But I didn’t hear from him after that.” He fidgets with the sleeve of his jumper.

“Well, I think he _is_ okay, Martin,” she says reassuringly. “I got a curt text message from him, and he didn’t respond to the emoji I sent.”

Martin looks more cheerful.

* * *

Jon doesn’t turn up on Friday.

He doesn’t pick up when Tim and Sasha try to call him from both his mobile phone and the office telephone, but does deign to respond to Martin’s increasingly anxious series of texts with _Still sick. I think I have a parasite._

Then he ignores them for the rest of the day.

Martin remains uncertain and fidgety, and at two Sasha has lost patience with him. She sends him off on a highly important mission to a second-hand shop to recover some tapes to record over for the real statements. He goes gladly, and Sasha is free to try to drink the four cups of tea he brought in over a half-hour period. Tim deposits on her desk an entertaining follow-up to the meat statement that almost counteracts the overall disgustingness of the case, and she spends the afternoon recording it with her last black cassette tape.

Her dinner that night is vegetarian.

* * *

Martin’s statement is on her desk when she arrives on Monday at eight, having slept in longer than she intended after a frankly wild Sunday night out with her university friends. She stares at it blankly for a minute or so, and rummages beneath her desk to try find another empty tape.

A quick search reveals a large cardboard box, chock-full of shiny black cassettes. Perfect. Martin must have found some more during some second-hand shop scavenging for other retro tech, and popped them under there Friday just after he got back and before he left for home. She pulls one out and puts in the recorder, shutting the cavity with a satisfying _snap_.

The door crashes open with a much louder sound, and she hurls the tape recorder at the intruder.

“I will fucking kill – What _–_ Jon? _Jesus_ Jon, you gave me a heart attack, what on _earth_ is going – Jon?”

Jon Sims stands in the doorway, panting heavily. His hands are locked in a white-knuckled grip around the splintery wood of the frame. He looks barely aware of the bruise on his cheek. She thinks he might be shaking. The purplish shadows under his eyes are almost black. He looks the worst she’s ever seen him.

Jesus, Jon –

“Jon, I had to just let you come in beforehand because I wasn’t your boss and couldn’t make you do anything, but I am _now_ and if you’re still sick, you have _got_ to go home – ”

“ _Still sick?_ ” Jon demands. His voice is scratchy, and trembling as much as she can see his shoulders are now. “What do you mean, _still sick?”_

Sasha stares at him. He’s completely frenetic. “You were sick …?” she tries slowly.

“What? W-Who told you that?” The words are high-pitched, quite unlike Jon’s usual cadence.

“… You told me, Jon.”

“I did _not_.”

God, Sasha thinks, he’s really, _really_ not okay. “Jon,” she starts cautiously, “if you can’t remember texting me – ”

“I didn’t text you! I-I-I don’t have my phone!” He shouts, waving his hands in the air. The movement does little to disguise the shaking. “She has my phone, Sasha! I haven’t had my phone for _days,_ and – and – and – and her _things_ must have gotten to the power because the landline was out too and I couldn’t email you and – and – and – ”

He’s hyperventilating. He’s babbling. His verbal diarrhoea is pouring out of his mouth faster than water in a cracked dam.

“Jon – ”

“ – outside my flat and – ”

“ _Jon_ – ”

“ – I c-couldn’t get out and then – ”

“ _Jon you need to calm down._ ”

He drops into the hard wooden chair on the other side of her desk and buries his face into his hands. She just stares at him, stunned. Jon is _never_ this open. Jon never exposes his soft underbelly. He worries too much about something a little bit clever, a little cruel, a little bit hungry, tearing him open. Jon doesn’t cry, but here he is in her office with face in hands, crying. She feels intrusive watching it happen.

His breathing steadies after a few more seconds. Sasha waits.

When he lifts his head, there are no tear tracks on his cheeks. There’s also no colour in them whatsoever, and he’s still scared out of his mind, but he’s also … calm. He’s calm now.

“Jon,” she says quietly but firmly, afraid of startling him again and bringing tears to the surface. “Are you alright?”

He inhales. “Physically, yes.”

And then:

“I would like to make a statement.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Flings garbage in your direction_ have an update!
> 
> Important things to note: Jon and Martin do get on in at this point in this AU, because I say so. Jon has a distinct lack of imposter syndrome when he's actually doing the job he studied for. Everyone in this AU is very stupid.
> 
> Also, Sasha is suspicious that Jon is 'sick', but offended silence on his end from emojis is on-brand for him and assuages that suspicion.
> 
> Unbetaed, as usual!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Statement of Jonathan Sims, Archival Assistant at the Magnus Institute, regarding paranormal encounters on Boothby Road. Statement given to Sasha James, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.
> 
> Statement begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING:
> 
> This chapter contains material that might be triggering for people with trypophobia (fear of holes), arachnophobia (spiders), entomophobia (insects), vermiphobia (worms). 
> 
> It's about as intense as the episode _Colony_ is, so if that episode was triggering for you I wouldn't recommend reading this. There are also descriptions comparing smells and sensations to rotting material and meat.

_Alright._

_I think – I think I shall preface this statement by saying that I do_ not _like spiders. I never have, not since I was child. The reason doesn’t matter, but the simple …_ fact _of my phobia does explain some of my behaviour that led to – that led to the events that transpired on the 27 th of February and subsequently to those that occurred … after. _

_You assigned me the Carlos Vittery statement; the one about the man convinced there was a – a – a_ ghost _spider in his flat that was – was_ haunting _him. And at that time I-I just thought he was a liar, or mentally unwell, which is what I’ve assumed is the case for most of the statement givers. No one sane looks at a spider and says, “Oh, it must be the one from my childhood that’s haunting me in spidery vengeance, and it’s not that I’m completely bonkers – ”_

 _I’m – I’m sorry, that’s not helpful. The point I am trying to make is that I did_ not _believe that there was a ghost spider,_ nor _that Mr Vittery was in a sound state of mind when he gave the Institute his statement, but I_ did _think that there might have been a spider problem in the building. Not a supernatural occurrence, just a normal thing that could happen anywhere. So even though I didn’t believe there was anything supernatural going on, I was – I was – well, to put it mildly, quite uncomfortable investigating a building with a spider problem. I know that spiders are harmless, you don’t have tell me that, God knows Martin told me enough for ten people just before I went over there – although if he ever went somewhere like Australia he might change his mind on_ that _…_

_Anyway. You asked me to investigate, so I do just that. I take the Northern Line to Archway and um, well I experience some very intense second thoughts about this whole trip –_

_I really,_ really _hate spiders –_

_And so I call Martin to try and, well, talk me into going in. Again, he talks about how spiders are nothing to be afraid of, like they aren’t nature’s most nightmarish creation but – anyway. He suggests I wait outside and he’ll come help me, and I’m about to agree when Tim somehow gets hold of his phone, and –_

_Well. Tim’s goading is very frustrating for me, but in his defense, it works exactly as I suppose he meant it to. I’m so annoyed by his comments that I decide to investigate by myself. Once I get out of the Underground, I walk the remainder of the way to Vittery’s apartment block on Boothby Road._

_It’s a reasonable sized building, and it’s getting dark so most people would be home for tea. But when I try the buzzers I don’t get any response. I suppose they’re all eating tea, or just not in a mood to be disturbed on a Wednesday evening, or just not home at all. The door into the building is too solid to even think about trying to force open and anyway, I think most people would agree I don’t exactly have the – well, let’s put it how Tim did: I haven’t the strength to properly tear off a piece of Scotch tape with my, er, ‘pipe-cleaner limbs’._

_A bit of an exaggeration to be sure, but I think the metaphor’s clear. However much it pains me to agree with Tim on anything._

_Despite any misgivings I might have about the presence of spiders or illegal entry into the building, I still intend to do my job. And obviously I don’t actively seek out the former, so … I look around for an ajar window, or a back door, or – obviously not a window into someone’s_ flat _, of course, I won’t break into someone’s home but – um, well, I’ll break into the building._

_Around the back I see an ajar window close to the ground, clearly not one into somebody’s flat. A basement window, which seems just about perfect for me to get into. I’m not sure if there’ll be any lights I can get to down there, but I have the torch on my phone, and the battery is still mostly charged. So I make my way over to the basement window, and as I take a step there’s … resistance beneath the sole of my shoe._

_Not enough that it stops me from putting my foot down, but just enough that I can tell I’ve stepped on something, or trodden_ in _something. This area is where all the rubbish bins are kept, so I expect the worst. The worst being, in this case, something like a piece of gum or rotten vegetable or something else equally revolting, but when I lift up my foot and shine the torchlight onto it, I nearly drop my phone._

_It’s a spider. A-a fairly big one. About the size of – of an eyeball, though I couldn’t tell you why that’s the example that comes to mind. It’s very dead and quite mangled and can’t possibly do anything with the way all its legs are sticking out at odd angles, but – well, I have a bit of a panic trying to scrape it off without getting my hands anywhere near my shoe, and then a few more moments after that to calm myself down and look for any more spiders. I knew that there might be spiders when I came here, and that’s just something I’ll have to deal with. However much I don’t want to._

_So after a couple of minutes, I feel ready to try the basement window. Getting in is not the difficult part; it’s realising that the window only_ appears _to be at ground level, but the room it opens into is definitely a sublevel, and I fall right down to the basement floor. I don’t injure myself badly, thankfully, although I do land on my left arm and do something to my wrist. Not a break or a sprain or anything – even now it’s only a little bruised, and sore when I rotate it – but it’s difficult to hold anything in it without hurting quite a bit, so I move my phone to my right hand and take a look around._

 _The basement is huge. It must run beneath the entire length of the building, and while there’s a set of stairs leading up to a doorway that presumably opens onto the ground floor, there’s a very large area beyond that that the light of my phone can’t reach without a little further exploration. There are cobwebs too: not enough to suggest any unusual spider activity; about the amount you’d expect for a basement, but definitely enough to make me feel as though something with very many legs is slowly crawling up my spine. I shiver a bit, hoping very much that I won’t encounter any spiders – or if I do, they stay in their webs, where they belong, away from me. Tim’s rubbish about British spiders being dangerous – which I_ know _is just Tim and isn’t true at all – flashes to mind again._

 _But I realise after a few seconds that the thought of meeting spiders actually_ isn’t _what makes me the most uncomfortable. There’s a – a smell. When I uh –_ dropped in _, I initially assumed it was just dust and I was more focused on my wrist anyway, but after examining it and deciding it would be fine, the smell just sort of … came to the front of my mind. After breathing it in for a little longer, I realise that it doesn’t smell like dust. It’s not a dry smell; it’s damp and foetid and – and organic. I think that’s the best word for it. Like meat that’s been left out and gone so rotten that it’s almost alive again with all the flies and maggots burrowing and eating their way through it. My next thought is that it’s maybe some rubbish that somehow got through the window from the yard above, but when I shine my torch down to the floor beneath the window – the_ only _window I can see in the entire basement – there isn’t anything but my footprints marking the grimy concrete. Whatever is making the smell is deeper in the basement. Festering somewhere in the dark._

 _When I first climbed through the window I intended to immediately find some stairs and continue a proper investigation of the above-ground levels without any illegal exploits. But as I’m down there I realise that the basement really is …_ odd. _It’s warm. And it is certainly not warm outside, it’s February. It’s a cold February night. But the temperature is about five degrees warmer than it should be by rights, and I can’t see any evidence of heaters down there, and even if there were: who would bother wasting electricity to heat up a basement, unless – unless they have a teenage son living there, I don’t know – but I’m suddenly, I-I’m completely sure that there’s something down there with me. I can’t explain why I think this with no warning, especially as I haven’t yet heard any noise suggesting that there’s so much as a rat down there with me, but I just – as sure as I know my own name, I_ know _that there is something there. Whether it’s someone hiding, or – or Vittery’s ghost spider I can’t tell, but I’m not alone._

 _It’s after I have this realisation that it’s confirmed by a quiet rustling from the other side of the basement. I – Rustling isn’t quite the right word. The sound is – it’s_ wetter _than that. Like when you’re draining spaghetti and all the bits of pasta squelch together wetly. It’s a – it’s a_ nauseating _sound, and doesn’t make me more eager to investigate, but that’s what I’m here to do._

_And what I get paid to do. So I reluctantly move forward, small steps, sweeping the basement with the light, until it falls upon a woman._

_I almost drop my phone then, but fumble and save it. She doesn’t seem to notice, standing as she is in the corner of the basement, faced towards the wall. I wonder if she’s a homeless woman who’s made her way in the same way as I did, hoping to find a warm place to sleep. Her hair is unwashed and matted into thick wads, and she has on a shabby grey coat over what looks to be a pair of spotted stockings. She isn’t wearing any shoes, and I take another step closer before something in my – my hindbrain tells me that I need to stop, I need to back away, I need to get the hell away from her right now. There has been only one other time in my life when I have felt that level of fear, and I almost sprint to the stairs to get the hell out, Vittery’s spider be_ damned _…_

_But it’s just a homeless woman, who’s probably much more scared of me, a strange intruder scrutinising her with a torch, than I am of her. And honestly, I’m quite annoyed at her for scaring me, so I swallow down my fear and ask, quite er – quite brusquely, honestly, what she’s doing down here._

_I regret it immediately. She must not have seen – nor cared – about the torchlight, but at the sound of my voice her head snaps towards me and I get a proper look at her face. It’s as spotted as her stockings, a-a-and for a second my brain can’t comprehend what I’m seeing. It refuses to comprehend it. But then it does, and I realise what I’m looking at._

_Her face and her bare legs are just – just masses of holes. Pitch-dark holes dotting every inch of visible flesh and that isn’t even the worst thing. There are silvery things moving behind them, l-like a – like a shadow moving behind a canopy of leaves. You can tell that there is something there, something big. Maybe it hasn’t noticed you. Maybe it doesn’t care about you. Maybe it wants to hurt you. You don’t know what. You have only the knowledge that there is something there … but it is too obscured to make out properly._

_One of the silvery things falls out of a cavernous wound in her cheek and as I stare at it on the ground, I realise that it’s – it’s a_ worm. _A w-worm that’s just –_ burrowed _out of her flesh, and for some reason all I can think about is how it looked just like fresh pasta b-being pushed through the holes in a pasta maker, squeezed into thin strips of spaghetti and I – I-I-I almost throw up on the spot, even before she drops her overcoat._

_I think you can imagine what the rest of her looked like._

_This time I actually do retch, and as she takes a step towards me more worms writhe from the holes in her flesh and cascade to the ground like a liquid and start crawling towards me in a single silvery mass, as fast as oncoming wave during a storm, and I just – I run._

_I’m quick, I’m very quick, and thank_ God _that I am because if I wasn’t I don’t think I’d be alive. I run up those stairs and wrench the handle and then I_ scream. _I’ve grasped it with my injured hand, and so I just drop my phone and open it with my now-free hand and slam it shut behind me. I’m almost not fast enough. One of the worms leaps at me – yes,_ leaps _, from the ground almost to my face and it’s only because I shut the door that it didn’t get me. The edge of the door crushes it against the frame with a wet crack like someone stepping on an eggshell, and black and grey chitin and slime sprays onto my_ face _._

 _This – this is too much. I sprint out of that building and down the street and don’t stop until I get to the Tube, but before that I have to stop into the public men’s room and wipe off t-the repulsive remnants of that_ thing _from my face and – well, I take a little longer than that because I have to throw up again. I make it onto the train with only moments to spare, and I spend the whole ride to my station feeling like that creature trapped in the forest with that obscured predator, knowing that there’s_ something _out there that wants to – not even to hurt me. I don’t know why I think that, those worms wanted to burrow into me like they did that woman in the basement, but I just – they wanted to not to hurt me, but for … something else. To use me._

_I make it back to my flat without encountering any worms or women or worm-women, and it’s as I’m locking my door behind me I remember that statement you had us look into a few weeks ago. It was before you changed the research system; the one where that student burst into worms, and I know that that woman in Boothby Road is Jane Prentiss. I’m gripped with the fear that she’ll come after me, but after a few minutes of locking my windows and pacing the flat, trying to get my heartrate down to something normal, I decide it’s not very likely. To get to my building she would have to either walk or take the Tube, and there’s no way in hell anyone would let her on the train, and it’s a Wednesday night in London; there are lots of people around. I check myself for worms anyway, but I can’t find a thing._

_I still haven’t bought a new laptop charger and I forgot to ask to borrow Tim’s, so I couldn’t email you to say what happened, and although I have a landline I don’t know anyone’s numbers. They’re all in my phone, which I dropped in the basement. So I have no way to contact you, which turns out to be … very,_ very _bad._

_The power’s out when I wake up after a restless night’s sleep, really just anxious dozing with intermittent startling awake, my heart pounding. The lights, the fridge, the microwave, the toaster, they’re all out of commission so I end up making a revolting cup of cold, instant coffee and eating the last slice of bread, and then get ready for work. I’ve collected all my things, and I’m just putting my coat on at the door when I smell it._

_The same sweet rot from last night._

_The panic that floods me I_ cannot _describe … I try to calm myself down, tell myself I’m imagining it, that it’s just residue from last night on my coat, which is a horrible thought but also a rapidly disproven theory. There’s not a spot on it, and the smell is strongest and – and syrupiest next to the door._

_I almost give up then without even checking, but a glance through the peephole reveals exactly what I expect, and what I really, really don’t want to see._

_Jane Prentiss is standing outside my door, gaze focused intensely on the peephole. I don’t know how, but she must_ see _me, because her ruined face splits into a blackened, toothy smile, and I swear she’s looking directly into my eyes. And then she raises her hand and – knocks._

_I don’t remember all that much from the following minutes, but the next thing I’m completely aware of is that I’m stuffing wads and wads of old newspaper beneath the crack in the door to stop anything from possibly getting in. I think there are pages I’ve torn out of some books in there too. And then I race about the flat, checking and rechecking and rechecking that all the windows are shut and sealed – which they are – and then I just._

_Stop._

_I lower myself onto the sofa and just sit there, petrified, listening to her knock._

_I have a doorbell, and I’m almost certain she wasn’t using it because she somehow_ knows _how much I hate the sound of knocking. The reason doesn’t matter, but I know she’s doing it because she knows exactly how much the sound fright – disconcerts me. No, frightens me. I might as well admit it. I’m giving a statement, aren’t I? Spiders and knocking at the door. A fine combination of fears._

_The thing is, I don’t realise that she isn’t the only thing to worry about._

_After four days of being trapped in my flat, I realise that I-I have company. Not a worm, thank God, but something almost worse._

_I’m cutting up the last of the cheese on the kitchen countertop to put on some stale crackers I found in the back of the cupboard, when I look up and see a spider sitting on the countertop, just next to the sink._

_And I_ know _that I said I thought Vittery was mad, and that there’s no such thing as ghost spiders, and truth be told the case is the last thing on my mind, but I freeze when I see it, because that spider_ is the same one I squashed outside Vittery’s apartment block _. I swear that it is the same one. It doesn’t move towards me, just twitches a couple of legs. It’s looking at me. The focus of all eight of those eyes is directly upon me._

 _I can’t bring myself to do anything. I want to smash it flat with a brick, but I back out of the kitchen and flee to my bedroom. I close the door behind me and try to push my chest of drawers in front of it, but I haven’t eaten well and trying makes my head spin until I collapse onto my bed and close my eyes and put my head between my knees. And that’s how I spend the rest of the day, trying to ignore Prentiss’s incessant knocking and the thing in my kitchen that I was too – that I was too_ cowardly _to kill._

 _But I think the fact that I_ didn’t _kill it, not again, is why it did what it did._

_This morning I woke up to … silence._

_Absolute silence. I couldn’t believe it. I lay there with my eyes open, straining every nerve in my body to catch the sound of her honeycombed knuckles against the door, but … nothing. Nothing at all. I risked opening my bedroom door, and the kitchen was clear of the gh – of the spider, and when I approached the door there wasn’t so much as a whiff of her putrefaction. A glance through the peephole confirmed that the hallway was empty._

_She was gone._

_I put my shoes on as quickly as I could so I could run here and tell you what had happened, but the instant I opened the door I realised that something –_

Else _._

_Had been there._

_Jane Prentiss was gone, but the evidence of her presence was still there._

_The door resisted opening when I pulled it inwards, but a good tug freed it and I heard a tearing noise, like when you catch a sleeve on a rusty nail and the sound of it ripping is almost physical. I felt it right down into my bones. And the thing that tore is what appears to be a bolt of white fabric attached to the door. But a brief glance proved that incorrect._

_Cobwebs curtained the doorway, each filled with dozens of decaying silvery worms, rigid and wreathed in threads of spider silk. I stared at them. There were the most webs at the bottom of the door where the worms must have tried to eat through the newspaper. I don’t know how long it would have taken them to eat through enough to get into my flat b-but – but they didn’t, and they were now dead._

_There was no sign of the spiders that must have done this. The webs were completely empty apart from the worms._

_I turned away, feeling very, very sick, and then I saw it._

_It was on the wall opposite my door that it had claimed, silk filaments connecting it to the door-frame, stretching across the hallway in almost transparent lines that were only made visible by wintry sunbeams illuminating the corridor._

_Vittery’s spider._

My _spider._

 _It had done this. It had killed the worms and-and-and claimed my door as its own. I don’t know how the mind of a spider works, or whatever was controlling it, if that’s even possible, it was like it was waiting for me to – t-to_ thank it _or something._

_It looked at me expectantly, and I ran._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Crosses out another box on Traumatise Jon bingo sheet_
> 
> Probably only one more chapter of this particular addition to the AU! Not sure when it'll be finished.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They've turned a corner, Sasha realises. Things - things won't be the same after this.

The office is silent but for the whirring of the tape recorder. It’s funny, that way. One would expect echoing off the plain, hollow walls, but the very air sucks away sound as soon as it’s made. She’s never really been in a place like that outside of the Institute. The first and worst flat she ever rented, an ambitious undertaking for a nineteen-year-old university student with little means of income, was a chilly concrete box whose previous tenant had somehow managed to staple carpet to every interior surface in an amusing precursor of that horrible statement about meat. Even that layer hadn’t been enough to rid the flat of ghostly echoes.

There is no evidence of such attempts to insulate her office, but it devours noise anyway.

Jon stares at the recorder, and Sasha stares at Jon, and they wait.

It takes ten seconds for her to clear her throat. “Statement ends,” she says, and snaps down the stop button. The clack dissipates quickly.

Jon’s eyes are closed now. He hauls in a long breath that’s only slightly shaky. It doesn’t seem like he’ll breach the silence with words, so she does instead, conversationally.

“Fuck.”

His eyes flick open as he startles. “Erm,” he manages. “Y-yes. Fuck, indeed.”

 _Fuck, indeed_ is objectively one of the most hilarious things she’s ever heard Jon say, but the absence of real humour in his tone does sort of smother any she might have been able to leach from the situation. And the situation? It’s – well, it’s ghastly.

Sasha would be a liar if she denied her own scepticism for statements like this. Not scepticism like _Jon’s,_ of course. She believes that these things happened. But she does doubt the … well, the actual _danger_ of the things encountered. While disgusting, nailing meat to walls wasn’t really harmful – or _injury-inducing,_ rather. Wilfred Owen’s Piper did not _cause_ death but was rather a harbinger. A warning. The ghost spider could hardly be classified a threat in Vittery’s statement, as its only actions were to apparently catch flies and stare passive-aggressively. There are some that were harmful. Dangerous. But not as much as the statement giver clearly thought they were.

But as she looks at Jon, whose trembling has only just subsided, she realises that this is the first time she’s ever recorded a _live_ statement. Or in actuality, a _real_ live statement. Chrestomanci woman doesn’t count.

Jon. Crotchety, sceptical Jon who doesn’t believe in any of this ‘nonsense’. Sitting there before her with uncharacteristically scruffy hair, askew glasses and sloppy clothing he would not have normally been caught dead at work in.

She can’t – nor would she want to – discount the experience he brought to her. If Jon said that there was a worm woman and a ghost spider at his flat, there was a worm woman and a ghost spider at his flat. Even if the spider seemed to be more helpful than anything else.

Jon worries a hole in the cuff of his jumper. Sasha sighs, and drags her fingers through her ponytail.

“I’ll admit,” she says, “I would not have expected to get a statement from _you_.”

Jon bristles. Sasha freezes. “I’m not _lying_ ,” he snaps.

Ah shit, that isn’t what she meant –

And then, puffing up like a small, particularly angry bird like he’s expecting her to make fun of him, says in a small, particularly angry voice, “I would never lie about something like this, nor would I ever consider wasting – ”

“Whoa, Jon, stop stop stop. Stop. I believe you.”

He deflates. “Oh. Good.”

She puts her elbows on the desk, rests her chin against her hands. Leans towards him. “There was no other sign of Prentiss in the corridor, apart from what was in the spider-web?”

“No.”

“Did you take the stairs down? Was there anything there?”

“N-no, I would have mentioned if there was. It was all spotless. Like she’d never been there, but for the – ” He makes a vague, abortive gesture. “The webs.”

“While you were trapped do you know if your neighbours might have seen her or – god, or come across her – ”

The idea of some unsuspecting person coming home from work to be befouled and consumed by a thousand hungry parasites briefly whites out part of Sasha’s brain with equal parts horror and revulsion, but Jon is shaking his head.

“There are only three flats on that floor,” he explains. “One belongs to the Albescus, but they’re visiting family in Romania; I don’t think they’ll be back for – another couple of weeks? And the third one’s vacant, disconnected to the water pipes and such. And I think – I think I’d’ve heard the scream if – if.”

She sighs. “Okay. That’s – well, obviously nothing about this is _good,_ but it’s something.”

“At the very least,” he agrees.

They sit in there in uncomfortable, tense silence for a few more moments.

“We need to let Tim and Martin know,” she says decisively. “It’s – ” she checks her phone. “Nine-thirty-ish. They’ll be in.”

“Right now?” Jon asks dubiously. His face does a complicated thing, and he immediately changes his mind. “Yes. Right now. That’s a good idea.”

“Do you want me to tell them, or you?” The _ah_ noise crackling from the back of his throat is as good as a well-spoken answer. “That’s alright. I’ll do it. Summarise things. We can get some tea in you, and – wait. You haven’t eaten today, have you, Jon?”

He guiltily nods affirmative.

“So you _haven’t?”_

“I haven’t.”

Sasha stands and reaches for his wrist in one swift movement. His skin is oddly cool to the touch. “Come one. I’m sure Tim and Martin are in the breakroom. I’ll tell them there, while you have something to eat.”

“I don’t need to be looked after – ” Jon starts to argue, but she ignores him. He stumbles as she pulls him after her, only really getting his feet to work properly when they’re well past Document Storage and Sasha is pushing open the door to the breakroom.

She’s correct; both Martin and Tim are in there. Martin’s depositing a new box of tea on the counter to join at least thirty other packets, and Tim’s probably just there to delay starting to do some work. Both of them swing round to greet her, and the eyes of both widen when they spot Jon.

“Jon!” Martin exclaims, delighted, nervous, both. “H-how are you? Are you feeling better? I was worried that – ”

“Sorry Martin,” Sasha interrupts, and casts a severe look at Tim to stop whatever jokey observation is about to fall from his mouth. “But I think Jon needs a cup of tea and some food before he’s ready to say anything. We’re having a staff meeting.”

“Oh. Oh, okay.” Martin casts a confused look in Jon’s direction. His frightened, drawn face succeeds at accomplishing the impossible: Martin enters a state of hyper-competence and efficiency. He reaches grimly for the kettle with one hand and pulls out a Tupperware container from the fridge with the other.

Only once Martin has pushed the cat mug of steaming oolong into Jon’s skinny hands and Tim has taken the seat beside him and propped his elbow up on Jon’s shoulder does Sasha begin. She doesn’t want to force Jon to relive his experience _again,_ only ten minutes after reliving it the first time, and only two hours after the _actual living_ of the experience, even if she’s the one saying what’s happened so she keeps it as succinct as physically possible.

“Jon has been trapped in his flat for four days by what we believe is whatever remains of Jane Prentiss.”

“ _What?_ ”

She nods grimly. “You heard me.”

Martin gapes from over by the microwave where he pulls out his – now Jon’s – reheated ravioli.

“Jesus Christ,” Tim says in an exceptional show of seriousness, and shifts his arm until it’s wrapped around Jon’s shoulders. “Are you alright?”

“Speaking candidly, I could be much better.”

Tim nods sympathetically. And then because he apparently can’t be 100% serious: “Bearing in mind I have no idea who Jane Prentiss is.”

“Worm-plosion woman,” Jon and Martin say simultaneously, darkly.

“Ah,” Tim says, enlightened.

 _Excuse – ?_ Sasha frowns. “Worm-plosion – ? What? Is this – is this an _inside joke_ I’m not part of?”

The faintly guilty expressions worn by all three of her assistants are illuminating.

“Sorry Sash,” Tim says cheerfully. “Us assistants have to have our secrets from our boss. Anyway, all of us working here is the biggest inside joke of all.”

“I can’t _believe_ you, I thought – no, wait wait wait. It doesn’t matter. Jane Prentiss. Keep an eye out. Stay sharp. Otherwise, business as normal.”

“What? No, wait – ” Jon starts, but her phone buzzes before he can get properly into what is sure to be a complaint. She casts a glance at it, and nearly throws it when she sees the name _Jon_ flashing up from the screen.

“Oh _Jesus_ – ”

“Jesus what?” Martin asks frantically, thumping the pasta contained on the breakroom table with more energy that warranted. “Is everything – ”

“I just got a text from Jon.”

Jon’s fingers instantly cease their anxious staccato on the mug, but otherwise this alarming news doesn’t receive the reaction it warrants. Tim’s brow scrunches as he raises a confused eyebrow, and Martin looks blank.

He slowly pushes the pasta over to Jon.

Jon shakily accepts it and resumes his anxious drumming on the lid. “My phone,” he clarifies, “which Jane Prentiss has had since Wednesday.”

“Oh _Jesus_ – ”

There we go.

Sasha unlocks her phone and opens the messages app to see a text which is equally bad, if not worse, than the epiphany that Jane Prentiss has been pretending to be Jon for the last four days while she terrorised him.

“Sash, what does it say,” asks Tim.

She feels very cold. “ _’Keep the marked one_ ,’” she reads aloud. “ _’We have had our fun. He will want to see it when the Archivist’s crimson fate arrives_.’”

Jon’s fingers skitter off the container. “What the _hell_ is that supposed to mean?”

“Which part?”

“I don’t know! Both! None! Either!”

“’Marked,’” Martin repeats to himself. And then, more urgently: “Jon, did a worm _get you?”_

Sasha’s stomach lurches as Jon’s face goes through entire film’s worth of emotion as it simultaneously drains of colour. He flinches, the motion shaking Tim’s arm of his shoulders, and then:

“Wait. No. N-no, I’m fine. I think. I checked this morning before I ran here, I-I – I’m fine.” He sags back down.

“Fuck,” Tim says, squeezing Jon into a short, one-armed hug. It’s a testament to how rattled Jon is that he doesn’t even grimace, let alone try to squirm away.

“I-I don’t know what she means by _marked_ ,” Jon tries with a valiant attempt at his usual snottiness. It comes off just as shaky as everything else he’s said.

Something twinges in the back of Sasha’s mind, like a forgotten memory. Or déjà vu. But it’s gone as quickly as it comes.

“But I think,” he continues, “that – I think that ‘crimson fate’ is fairly obvious in what it means. Particularly in reference to you, Sasha.”

“Yes,” she agrees. “It seems she’s only really interested in killing me.”

She intends to continue her line of thought, but actually _saying_ it out loud –

That Jane Prentiss honestly, truly, swear-to-God wants to _kill_ her –

Pulls her up short.

She’s dislocated a few shoulders in her time (always well-deserved) and did once push Cohen from secondary school down a flight of stairs once, but she has _never –_

And she _means_ never –

– done anything to warrant being _murdered_. Especially not in such a horrific way. She’s earned a slap or two in her day. Not death via the most repulsive, nauseating, sordid, _agonising_ way that a once-person like Jane Prentiss promises it will be.

She can almost smell the putrefaction.

“Sasha?”

She startles, looks away from the middle space she had gazed into. Tim is standing now, and Martin has taken the seat beside Jon. Her assistants blink at her like nervous deer. “Sorry,” she says heavily. “I – look, she’s only threatened to kill _me_. You’re right, Jon.”

“I didn’t say _only_ – ”

“ _’Keep the marked one_ ,’” she repeats. “ _’We have had our fun._ ’ It sounds to me like – like she meant to scare us. Not hurt us. Or not hurt any of _you_. I think she’s done with you, Jon.”

Jon stares at her. “Done with me.”

“As in, frighten you and deliver a message to us. And it’s _horrible._ You shouldn’t have had to go through any of that. But I feel – I feel she’s not interested in hurting any of you.”

_Archivist._

This was meant to be a fucking job, not a – not a whatever the hell this is –

“Not interested in _hurting us?_ ” Jon demands. “That’s – that’s _bullshit!_ Th-those things went for my _face,_ Sasha, and they’ve wouldn’t got me too if I hadn’t squashed it with the door! They’re parasites! They don’t follow commands! ‘Oh, just eat a bit of his nose, don’t eat through his eyeball and burrow into his brain; we’re aiming to _mutilate,_ not kill – ‘”

“ _She said she was done with you, Jon_ – ”

His voice is edging towards something worryingly close to hysteria. “ _Everyone in this room is in danger._ She found out where I live, she can find out where you all do too! we’re not safe outside the Archives, we shouldn’t even _leave_ – ”

“I love you all,” Tim says, “but even _I_ think there’s going to be problems with the four of us sharing that shitty cot in Document Storage.”

“ _Tim_ – ”

“None of you are living in the Archives,” Sasha snaps.

“Well, I’m _not_ going back to my flat,” Jon snarls right back.

“And you’re _not_ living in the Archives either!” she shouts. “Prentiss called me _Archivist._ Whatever problem she has with me, it’s related to the Magnus Institute. And I’m not going to just – god, I’m not going to _live in the building_ that has somehow given someone like _her_ cause to go after _my_ friends and threaten to _kill_ me, and I’m sure not going to let any of _you_ sleep here either! You’re not going anywhere near that cot again, Jon. If I have to book you a hotel for six months, then so be – ”

“You can stay with me,” Martin blurts.

There is a pulse of surprised silence. His face is very pink, and Jon turns to him from Sasha, looking a little dazed. Tim, meanwhile, turns towards Sasha, eyebrow experiencing the rapture.

“What?” Jon manages.

Martin blinks a little, probably shocked by his own daring, but manages to continue. “How about it? You can stay at mine; I have a spare mattress and lots of linens, it’s pretty close – well I mean, it’s actually not close to the Institute at all, it’s an hour’s commute – but it’s pretty far from your flat so it’s unlikely Prentiss would find it and if we see _anything_ of her, worms or anything at all, we can – we can go to the Institute. Yeah?”

He says the last part to Sasha with a pleading look in his eye.

Sasha knows that if she has to agree to this to stop Jon from trying to sleep in Document Storage –

“Fine. Yes, I think that’s a good idea. _But_ – ” she holds up a finger, “ – Document Storage is a _last resort._ Is that acceptable with everyone?”

“If we see worms in our flats, we come live at the Archives,” Tim summarises.

“Let’s say _near_ ,” Sasha corrects. “Anywhere in the general vicinity of your flat. If you see a worm, you let me know and you can come here.”

A compromise between her and Jon, she supposes. Now she just has to wait and see if he –

“Alright,” Jon says.

Martin’s gaze snaps back to Jon.

“You’re agreeing?” Sasha asks.

“… Yes. I suppose. I think it would be safer for all of us to be in the Archives, but if you’re so adamantly against that – ”

“I am.”

“ – then this is an. Um. Acceptable compromise.”

“An acceptable compromise,” she repeats.

Jon nods stiffly.

“And is this okay with everyone else?”

Tim shrugs. “All good with me!”

“Martin?”

“Well, I mean, I did suggest it so – ” he trails off.

Sasha lets out a huge, long sigh. “Right. Okay.”

And then they lapse back into silence.

She’ll have to tell Elias what’s going on, she thinks as she watches Martin hand Jon a fork and pop the lid off the pasta, and hears Jon softly thank him. See about getting some emergency air mattresses to store should the worst happen. She won’t tell them to get back to work now. They need time to adjust. Take it in. Come to terms with the fact that their jobs just got a lot more frightening, a lot more dangerous.

And _should_ the worst happen … well. Surely, she thinks uncertainly, they’ll be able to handle it.

She hopes.

God, she hopes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _That's a wrap, folks!_
> 
> Thanks for the comments and support I've received for this; I really wasn't expecting as much as I got, so thank you so much! I'm not finished with this AU, not by a long shot, but the TMA fic I'm currently working on is actually going to be a one-shot (or two-shot, maybe) of a discarded idea from this AU that I've decided won't work with the plot I've decided on, but like too much to abandon. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy the next installment, whenever it may arrive! <3

**Author's Note:**

> Me: I don't really like my writing.  
> Me @ me: FUCK IT someone will enjoy it


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